Loss and love in the storm of guitars and broken glass that was the 2000s UK indie music scene.
This documentary explores the legacy of one of the most notorious British sitcoms of all time. Launching alternative comedy onto our screens, the show made household names of its performers and writers and proved to be a huge influence, despite the BBC reportedly being baffled by what they'd commissioned back in 1982. Never before had a flagship comedy show contained so much violence, depravity and anarchy - it was a shot across the bow to mainstream comedians that things would never be the same again.
This series features some of Britain's best-loved comedians and funniest comedy actors gathering together for a jolly night in front of the telly, watching clips from classic sitcoms and sketch shows both old and new.
After years of drifting aimlessly and alone, Richard Herring is now settled down with a wife and a tiny baby. Is he finally happy now? Or does responsibility for the lives of others come with its own terrors? In his twelfth solo stand up show, Richard examines whether we can ever hope to be or are meant to be truly content. If we were never unhappy would happiness have any meaning? Why do our brains force us to envision the worst possible outcomes even on a day when everything seems fine. How likely is it that Richard's baby will be skewered by a stalactite of frozen urine falling from a plane and is it really worth him wasting his time thinking about it? Does being happy mean a comedian loses his edge and true belly laughs only come from depression? How much pressure was there on Happy the dwarf to live up to his name? Is there any system that will guarantee us eternal bliss or should we just embrace the fact that life is a vale of tears and our only option is to laugh in its face?
After covering weighty issues like death, love, religion and spam javelins, the 'King of Edinburgh' (6 Music) is in a frivolous mood with this show about daftness, whether the term cool comedian is an oxymoron, bouncing joyously on the sofa and how Herring's whole career is a failed attempt to top a piece of visual slapstick comedy he came up with at 16. Can he revisit the joke thirty years on, or will it smash his old bones?
This Morning With Richard Not Judy or TMWRNJ is a BBC comedy television programme, written by and starring Lee and Herring. Two series were broadcast in 1998 and 1999 on BBC2. The name was a satirical reference to ITV's This Morning which was at the time popularly referred to as This Morning with Richard and Judy. The show was a reworking of old material from their previous work together along with new characters. The show was hosted in a daytime chat show format in front of a live studio audience, although it featured a small proportion of pre-recorded location inserts. It was structured by the often strange obsessions of Richard Herring; examples include his rating of the milk of all creatures and attempting to popularise the acronym of the show. The show featured repetition, with regular and vigilant viewers being rewarded by jokes that would make no sense to casual viewers. The show seemed to oscillate between the intellectual and puerile. However, irony was often used, even though the citing of irony as an excuse was mocked by the show's stars in one of many self-referential jokes.
Fist of Fun was a British comedy television and radio programme, written by and starring Lee and Herring. A lot of the show's comic material was adapted from Lee and Herring's radio programme Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World. Each episode of Fist of Fun featured several disparate sketches and situations. Fist of Fun began as a BBC Radio 1 series in 1993, before becoming commissioned as a television series on BBC Two in early 1995. It was broadcast at 9pm on Tuesday nights, and was successful, but not a major ratings-winner. The second series was aired on Friday nights, and although its ratings were relatively good, the show suffered from a lack of preparation and poor promotion. The show was not given a third series, and Lee and Herring went on to write This Morning with Richard Not Judy, for BBC Two. Many other comedians who appeared in the series went on to fame themselves, including Kevin Eldon, Peter Baynham, Ronni Ancona, Alistair McGowan, Al Murray, John Thomson, Rebecca Front, Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins, Ben Moor and Sally Phillips.
British comedian best known for being one half of 90s comedy double act Lee and Herring, with Stewart Lee.
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